University of Virginia Library

19. CHAPTER XIX.

Enough—enough—cried Burroughs, on finding Matthew
Paris so disturbed in his intellect—enough—there
is not hope now, Rachel. The father himself would
be no witness now, though he had been told by our witnesses
upon their death-bed, while they expected to die,
just what, if it could be shown here, would be a matter
of life and death to us. But still, before I give up, I
should like to know the meaning of that rule of evidence
you spoke of the other day, which would appear
to make it necessary for me to produce only the best
evidence which the nature of the case admits of. We
have done that here....a rule which being interpreted by
the men of the law is said to be this....that we are to
give such evidence only, as that none better may appear
to be left behind—we have done that now—

We are weary of this—what have you to say to the
charge made against you by the apparition of your
wife? Before you reply however, it is our duty to apprise
you, that whatever you may happen to say in your
own favor will go for nothing—

Nevertheless I am ready to reply.

—We do not seek to entrap you—

So I perceive. Repeat the charge.

You are charged with having—what ho, there!—
lights—lights—more lights—

Lights—more lights! cried the people, what, ho
there! How dark it grows—

And how chill the air is—

Ay......and quiet as the grave.

—You are charged I say, with having caused the
death of your two wives....who have partly promised, if
you deny the charge, to confront you here.

The people began to press backward from each other,
and to gasp for breath.

You have only to say yes or no, and abide the proof.

Indeed—is that all?

Yes—all—

Then...behold me. As he spoke, he threw up his
arms, and walked forth into a broad clear space before
the bench, where every body could hear and see him,
and was about to address the jury, when he was interrupted
by a crash of thunder that shook the whole house,
and appeared to shake the whole earth. A dreadful
outcry ensued, with flash after flash of lightning and peal
after peal of thunder, and the people dropped upon their
knees half blinded with light and half crazy with terror;
and covered their faces and shrieked with consternation.

Why, what are ye afraid of judges? And you, ye people—cried
the prisoner, that ye cover your faces, and
fall down with fear....so that if I would, I might escape.

Look to the prisoner there....look to the prisoner.

—Ye do all this, ye that have power to judge me,
while I....I the accused man....I neither skulk nor cower.
I stand up....I alone of all this great multitude who are
gathered together to see me perish for my sins....the Jonah
of this their day of trouble and heavy sorrow.

Not alone, said Rachel Dyer, moving up to the bar.

If not altogether alone, alone but for thee, thou most
heroic woman....O, that they knew thy worth!....And
yet these people who are quaking with terror on every
side of us, bowed down with mortal fear at the voice of
the Lord in the Sky, it is they that presume to deal with

us, who are not afraid of our Father, nor scared by the
flashing of his countenance, for life and for death—

Yea George—

Be it so—

Prisoner at the bar—you are trifling with the court...
You have not answered the charge.

Have I not!—well then—I prepare to answer it now.
I swear that I loved them that I have buried there—
there!—loved them with a love passing all that I ever
heard of, or read of. I swear too that I nourished and
comforted and ministered to the dear creatures, who, ye
are told, have come out of the earth to destroy me—
even me—me, their husband, their lover, and the
father of their children! I swear too—but why continue
the terrible outrage? Let my accusers appear! Let them
walk up, if they will, out of their graves!—their graves
are before me. I am not afraid—I shall not be afraid—
so long as they wear the blessed shape, or the blessed
features of them that have disappeared from their bridal
chamber, with a—

He was interrupted by great noises and shrieks that
were enough to raise the dead—noises from every part
of the grave-yard—shrieks from people afar off in the
wood, shrieks from the multitude on the outside of the
house—and shrieks from the sea-shore; and immediately
certain of the accusers fell down as if they saw
something approach; and several that were on the outside
of the meeting-house came rushing in with a fearful
outcry, saying that a shed which had been built up
over a part of the burial-ground was crowded with
strange faces, and with awful shapes, and that among
them were the two dead wives of the prisoner.

There they go—there they go! screamed other voices
outside the door; and immediately the cry was repeated
by the accusers who were within the house—all

shrieking together. “Here they come!—here they
come!—here they come!”—And Judith Hubbard looking
up and uncovering her face, about which her cloak
had been gathered in the first hurry of her distraction,
declared that the last wife of Burroughs, on whom her
eyes were fixed at the time, was then actually standing
before him and looking him in the face, “O, with such
a look—so calm, so piteous and so terrible!”

After the uproar had abated in some degree, the
judges who were huddled together, as far as they
could possibly get from the crowd below, ordered up
three more of the witnesses, and were about to speak to
them, when Burroughs happening to turn that way also,
they cried out as if they were stabbed with a knife,
and fell upon the floor at their whole length and were
speechless.

Whereupon the chief judge, turning toward him, asked
him what hindered these poor people from giving
their testimony.

I do not know said Burroughs, who began to give
way himself now, with a convulsion of the heart, before
the tremendous array of testimony and weight of delusion;
to fear that of a truth preternatural shapes were
about him, and that the witnesses were over-persuaded
by irresistible power, though he knew himself to be no
party in the exercise of such power. I do not know,
said he: I am utterly confounded by their behaviour.
It may be the devil.

Ah—and why is the devil so loath to have testimony
borne against you?

“Which query,” says a writer who was there at the
time, and saw the look of triumph which appeared in the
faces of the whole bench, “did cast Burroughs into
very great confusion.”

And well it might, for he was weighed to the earth,

and he knew that whatever he said, and whatever he
did; and whether he spoke with promptitude or with
hesitation; whether he showed or did not show a sign of
dismay, everything would be, and was regarded by the
judges, and the jury, and the people, as further corroboration
of his turpitude.

Here the trial ended. Here the minds of the jury
were made up; and although he grew collected at last,
and arose and spoke in a way that made everybody about
him weep and very bitterly too, for what they called
the overthrow of a mind of great wisdom and beauty
and power; and although he gave up to the judges a written
argument of amazing ingenuity and vigor which is
yet preserved in the records of that people, wherein he
mocked at their faith in witchcraft, and foretold the
grief and the shame, the trouble and the reproach that
were to follow to them that were so busy in the work of
death; yet—yet—so impressed were the twelve, by the
scene that had occurred before their faces, that they
found him guilty; and as if the judges were afraid of a
rescue from the powers of the air, they gave judgment
of death upon him before they left the bench, and contrary
to their established practice, ordered him to be
executed on the morrow.

On the morrow? said he, with a firm steady eye and
a clear tone, though his lip quivered as he spoke. Will
ye afford me no time to prepare?

We would not that the body and soul both perish; and
we therefore urge you to be diligent in the work brother,
very diligent for the little time that is now left to
make your calling and election sure. Be ready for the
afternoon of the morrow.

Hitherto the prisoner at the bar had shown little or
no emotion; hitherto he had argued and looked as if he
did not believe the jury nor the judges capable of doing

what they had now done, nor the multitude that knew
him, capable of enduring it. Hitherto he had been as it
were a spectator of the terrible farce, with no concern
for the issue; but now....now....all eyes were rivetted
upon him with fear, all thoughts with alarm; for though
he stood up as before, and made no sort of reply to the
judges, and bore the wracking of the heavy irons with
which they were preparing to load him, as if he neither
felt nor saw them; yet was there a something in his
look which made the officers of the court unsheathe their
swords, and lift up their axes, and the people who were
occupied about him, keep as far out of his reach as they
possibly could.

Yet he neither moved nor spoke, till he saw the women
crowding up to a part of the house where he had seen
Elizabeth Dyer, and stoop as if she that had been kneeling
there a few moments before, lay very low, and lift
her up as if she had no life in her, and carry her away,
guarded by men with pikes, and with swords and with
huge firelocks. Then he was moved—and his chains
were felt for the first time, and he would have called out
for a breath of air—prayed for a drop of water to save a
life more precious by far than his—but before he could
open his mouth so as to make himself heard, he saw
Rachel Dyer pressing up to the bar of death, and heard
the judges call out to the high-sheriff and his man to
guard the door, and look to the prisoner.

He will get away if you turn your head, Mr. sheriff,
said one of the judges.

That he will, added a witness, that he will! if you
don't look sharp, as sure as my name is Peter P.

Watch and pray—watch and pray—added another.

Burroughs looked up to the bench with surprise, then
at the people, who were watching every motion of his
body as if they expected him to tear away the ponderous

fetters and walk forth as free as the wind of the desert,
and then at the blacksmith who stood near with his hammer
uplifted in the air; and then his chest heaved and his
chains shook, and the people hurried away from his path,
and tumbled over each other in their eagerness to escape,
and the chief-judge cried out again to the officer to look
to the door and be prepared for a rescue.

Let me be tried now! I entreat thee, said Rachel Dyer,
throwing up her locked-hands before Judge Winthrop,
and speaking as if she was about to plead not for
death but for life. Let me be tried now, I beseech thee.

Now.—

Yea—now!—before the maiden is brought back to life.
O let her be at peace, ye men of power, till I have a—
have a—

She gathered herself up now with a strong effort, and
spoke with deliberate firmness....

—Till I have gone through the work which is appointed
for me by the twelve that I see there—

Be it so.—I say, Mr. high-sheriff!

Well, Mr. judge Winthrop?

This way, this way; you'll be so good as to remove
a—a—a—(Looking at Burroughs who stood leaning
against the wall)—you are to be a—a—(in a whisper of
authority)—you are to be careful of what you do—a very
hard case, very—very—

Yes judge—

Well, well—well, well—why don't ye do as I bid
you?

What am I to do?

What are you to do....remove the prisoner—poor soul.

Which prisoner?

Why that are....poh poh, poh—(pointing to Burroughs.)

Where to?

Where to Sir?—Take him away; away with him
—pretty chap you are to be sure, not to know where
to take a man to, after its all over with hm—poh, poh,
poh.

I say, Mr. Judge, none o' that now—

Take the man away Sir. Do as you are bid.

Who—me—cried Burroughs, waking up from his
fit of apathy and looking about on every side.

Away with him.

Judges—judges—hear me. Let me remain, I pray
you, cried he, setting his back to the wall and lifting his
loaded arms high up in the air—suffer me to stay here
till the jury have said whether or no this heroic woman
is worthy of death—I do beseech you!

Take him away, I tell you—what are ye afraid of?

Judges—men—I would that ye would have mercy,
not on me, but on the people about me. I would that
ye would suffer me to tarry here—in fetters—till the jury
have given their verdict on Rachel Dyer. Suffer
me to do so, I beseech you, and I will go away then, I
swear to you, whithersoever it may please you, like a
lamb to the slaughter. I swear this to you before God!
—but, so help me God, I will not be carried away alive
before. I will not stir, nor be stirred while I have
power to lift my arms, or to do what you now see me
do—

As he spoke, he lifted up his arms in the air—up—up,
as high as he could reach, standing on tip-toe the while;
and brought them down with such force, loaded as they
were, that he doubled the iron guard which kept him in
the box, and shattered the heavy door from the top to
the bottom.

—Behold—shorn though I be of my youth, betrayed
though I have been, while I forgot where I was, I do
not lack power. Now bid your people tear me away

if you have courage! For lo, my feet are upon the
foundations of your strength....and by Jehovah—the
God of the strong man of other days!—I'll not be
dragged off till I know the fate of the giantess before
you.

We shall see—cut him down officer—cut him down!

Very well. Come thou near enough to cut me down,
officer, and I'll undertake for thee.

Judges—how little ye know of that man's power—
why not suffer him to stay? cried Rachel Dyer. Why
will ye provoke it? On your heads be the issue, if ye
drive your ministers to the toil! on yours their blood, if
they approach him!

The sheriff hung back—and the judges, after consulting
together, told Burroughs he might stay, and ordered
the trial of the women to proceed.